The Art of Private Gardening: An Interview With Gail King
Sitting in her private garden, among the flowers and lush palms she has spent years cultivating, Gail King tells us she didn’t always enjoy gardening. Her mother and grandmother both had their own private gardens in England, where Gail spent her childhood. She, however, preferred to spend time riding her pony than pulling out weeds.
This distaste faded over the years. When Gail and her husband bought their house in the early 1980s, it came with a layout for a garden. “It was a really nice layout, but there were no beds,” Gail explains. “So I have spent the last thirty years putting in flower beds and just softening it.”
Today, her garden is brimming with hydrangeas, daylilies, roses, and camellias. Verbena bonariensis, a towering purple flower topped with a cloud of petals, dots the backyard. Tea olive trees, which Gail says may be the biggest in South Carolina, line the garden wall. In every corner, there is something precious to find: a bird’s nest that fits in the palm of her hand, a young Japanese maple, a sculpture of a songbird perched high above the flowerbed.
Trailed by her English Springer Spaniels, Gail King walks through her private garden each night, past the goldfish pond and the flowers climbing high, blooming in every color. She sits in a chair at the edge of her pool and looks up. “I look at the tree, and I look at the night sky,” Gail says. “And I just — every night, I enjoy the garden for myself.”
In this video, Gail reveals how she brought this magnificent private garden to life.
